"In the day of adversity consider."
It _is_ the day of adversity. A great grief throws its shadow over
heart and hearth and home. There is such a sorrow as this land never
knew before; agony such as never until now wrung the heart of the
nation. In mansion and cottage, alike, do the people bow themselves.
We have been through the Red Sea of war, and across the weary,
desert marches of griefs and bereavements, but heretofore we have
felt that _our leader_ was with us, and believed that surely as Moses
was led by the pillar of cloud and of fire, so did God lead him.
But now that leader is not. Slain, slain by the hand of the
assassin, murdered beside his wife! The costliest blood has been
shed, the clearest eye is closed, the strongest arm is nerveless--the
Chief Magistrate is no more. "The mighty man cries bitterly; the day
is a day of wrath, a day of trouble and distress, a day of wasteness
and desolation, a day of darkness and gloominess, a day of clouds and
thick darkness."
It is no mere official mourning which hangs its sad drapery
everywhere. It is not alone that a President of the Republic is, for
the first time, assassinated. No; there is a tender grief that
characterizes the bereavement of a loved friend, which shows there
was something in this man which grappled him to men's hearts as with
hooks of steel.
But mourning the death of the Chief Magistrate, it becomes us to
review the elements of his career as a ruler, which have so endeared
him to loyal hearts.
If I were to sketch the model statesman, I would say he must have
mental breadth and clearness, incorruptible integrity, strength of
will, tireless patience, humanity, preserved from demoralizing
weakness by conscientious reverence for law, ardent love of country,
and, regulating all, a commanding sense of responsibility to God, the
Judge of all. These, though wrapped in seeming rustic garb, were
found in Abraham Lincoln. He had mental breadth and clearness. In
spite of a defective early education, he became a self-taught
thinker, and later in life he read widely and meditated profoundly,
until he acquired a thorough mental discipline. He possessed the
power to comprehend a subject at once in the aggregate and in its
details. His eye swept a wide horizon and descried clearly all within
its circumference. He was a keen logician, whose apt manner of
"putting things" made him more than a match for practiced
diplomatists and wily marplots. These were men of might about his
council-board, scholars and statesmen, but none arose to his
altitude, much less was either his master.
That very facetiousness sometimes critcised, kept him from becoming
morbid, and gave healthfulness to his opinions, free alike from fever
and paralysis. That his was incorruptible integrity, no man dare
question. He was not merely above reproach, but eminently above
suspicion. Purity is receptive. "Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall _see God_," is as profound in philosophy as comprehensive
in theology. Purity in the realm of moral decision and motive, is a
skylight to the soul, through which truth comes direct. Abraham
Lincoln was so pure in motive and purpose, looked so intensely after
the right that he might pursue it, that he saw clearly where many
walked in mist.
Without developing the characteristics of the ideal statesman
analytically, let us see how they were manifest in his administration.
It began amid the rockings of rebellion. A servile predecessor,
deplorably weak, if not criminal, had permitted treason to be freely
mouthed in the national capitol, treasonable action to be taken by
State authorities, and armed treason to resist and defy federal
authority, and environ with bristling works the forts and flag of the
Union. At such a juncture, Mr. Lincoln, then barely escaping
assassination, was inaugurated. As was right, he made all proper
efforts for conciliation, tendered the olive-branch, proposed such
changes as existing laws, and even of the Constitution, as should
secure Southern rights from the adverse legislation of a sectional
majority. All was refused, and traitors said, "We will not live with
you. Though you sign a blank sheet and leave us to fill it with our
own conditions, we will not abide with you."
Refusing peace, war was commenced, not by the President, but by
secessionists. War has been waged on a scale of astounding vastness
for four years, and Mr. Lincoln falls as the day of victory dawns.
His claim to the character of a great statesman is to be estimated
in view of the fiery ordeal which tried him, and not by the gauge of
peaceful days. In addition to the most powerful armed rebellion ever
organized, he was confronted by a skillful, able, persistent, well
compacted partisan opposition. He was to harmonize sectional feelings
as antagonistic as Massachusetts and Kentucky, and to rally to one
flag generals as widely apart in sentiment and policy as Phelps and
Fitz John Porter. That under such difficulties he sometimes erred in
judgment and occasionally failed in execution, is not strange, for he
was a man, but that he erred so seldom, and that he so admirably
retrieved his mistakes, shows that he was more by far than an
ordinary man; more by far than an average statesman. Standing where
we do today, we feel that he was divinely appointed for the crisis;
that he was chosen to be the Moses of our pilgrimage, albeit, he was
to die at Pisgah and be buried against Beth-Peor, while a Joshua
should be commissioned to lead us into the land of promise.
In studying the administration of these four eventful years, it
seems to me there were four grand landmarks of principle governing
him, ever visible to the eye of the President, by which he steadily
made his way.